“Ikonica profiles Canada’s top brands – including Roots – and explores the country’s rich, original brand heritage. Well written, highly informative and beautifully illustrated and designed, the book is an important work in the on-going study of what goes into the making of an iconic brand.”

“Now here’s the perfect way for any loyal citizen with a bent toward commerce to gear up for the Canada Day weekend. [Jeannette Hanna & Alan Middleton] …have teamed to produce one of the more handsomely packages business books of this or any other season, Ikonica… While the core of the book is its treatment of brands… the wee essays ponder the notion of what is definably Canadian…”

”For readers who struggle to isolate iconic – or ‘ikonic,’ as the authors prefer – brands beyond the ubiquitous Tim Hortons and the once-ubiquitous Hudson’s Bay, this may seem a comic prophesy. But co-author Jeannette Hanna, vice-president, brand strategy at the corporate branding and design shop Cundari SFP, argues that the mistake Canadians make is in undervaluing our chameleon nature. ‘The way we compete is to be invisible, to blend in like wallpaper,’ Ms. Hanna says. ‘That is a great asset because people see you then as one of their own.’”

“From Peter C. Newman going on about power games to Naomi Klein dissing brands altogether to Andrea Mandel-Campbell telling us why Mexicans don’t drink Molson beer, we just have not had a lot of optimistic discourse on Canadian brands in the last 40 years. Jeannette Hanna’s and Alan Middleton’s new book Ikonica has changed that. In short, Hanna/Middleton show that brands = values and that Canadian values = good brands and that Canadian companies can win globally on the basis of our own particular brand genius.”